"When I was four or five years old, I filled a notebook with drawings of black spirals and labeled them Cruel Worlds," Eduardo Milieris says with a shy grin as he explains his early forays in art. "I used to watch this cartoon in which a guy gets flushed down the toilet, saying, ‘Goodbye, cruel world!’"

Today, Milieris, the creator of Watchcraft designs, spends more time with e-mail than with cartoons, but his childlike curiosity has not diminished. It has taken him from Montevideo, Uruguay, where he grew up, to New York City, from aspiring artist to successful entrepreneur and world-class metalsmith. Since founding his studio in 1994, his limited-edition watches have become collectors’ items, with one recently fetching $1,750 at an online auction.

From his studio at the foot of the Queensboro Bridge, overlooking the skyline of midtown Manhattan, Milieris creates two lines of handcrafted timepieces. For his original Watchcraft line, Milieris signs and numbers each piece, handpaints the faces and leaves the bands of distressed copper, brass and sterling silver unsealed so that over time they can acquire a patina from the air, temperature and skin of the wearer. The look is rakish, industrial chic.

His newest line, the classic brushed surfaces of the Milieris Titanium Signature Collection and Milieris Silver Signature Collection, are sleek and elegant. "The Milieris Titanium watches are not a limited edition," he notes on his website. "I intend to sell a zillion of them and buy an island in the South Pacific. You are invited."

Milieris also spends his time turning one man’s trash into another’s treasure. He scours the banks of New York City’s East River and nearby warehouse lots for beams of wood, old metal tools and weather-worn containers, all to incorporate in future sculptures. Along the walls of his studio, brushed silver pendulums and rusted-metal sculptures sway and tick. By a window, three or four shelves are lined with random glass containers of metal washers—a few soak in a shot glass of saline water, some in a wine goblet with bleach, others in a Mason jar with vinegar.

"I’m always experimenting to create certain finishes, to help me discover what’s next," he says.

His initial fascination with time and motion was sparked by an exhibit of work by Alexander Calder, whose vibrant colors and playful mobiles captivated the 7-year-old. Afterward, he went home to experiment, painting what he called his "sunny-side ups," egg-looking works on posterboard that he ultimately converted into non-working clocks. By the age of 10, he was using markers to paint the glass of his watch—and his shirtsleeves, to his mother’s dismay.

A few years later, he came up with a seconds-meter machine—an enamel-faced clock with only one hand showing the seconds. He put a plaque on it that read: "Ars Longa, Vita Brevis" (art lasts, life is brief), a theme he would continue to explore in his mid-20s at Montevideo’s School of Liberal Arts, where he studied photography, video art and sculpture.

"I’d be in classes during the day, get a little sleep, then out till dawn...very bohemian," he says. He would have lunch with his parents almost every day, while earning a living as an art and portrait photographer and later as the manager of a camera shop.

Though Calder planted the seed, Milieris credits a fourth-year professor with helping him cultivate his own style. "I always thought of him as a sort of Zen teacher because he forced you to dig deep, to uncover deeper talents. He’d stop to inspect your work and, if he liked it, he’d hit you on the head and say ‘See, Eduardo, you can do it!’ "

After graduation in 1990, Milieris and his new bride, Patricia, came to New York City, something he had dreamed of doing for years. With their savings and his work as a messenger at the United Nations, they established themselves in their new country, but Milieris ultimately yearned for more.

Returning to watch design, he found a way to nurture a business and his new daughter, Virginia ("my greatest creation"), from home, while his wife worked as a physical therapist. "I couldn’t have done it without Patricia. She was willing to support our family until Watchcraft took off."

As it happened, Watchcraft hit its stride sooner than expected and many buyers have kept coming back, largely thanks to the designer’s warm and engaging manner.

"Eduardo always denies it when I call him a gentleman," says Wendy Rukmini Walker, owner of three As Kindred Spirits galleries, who has known Milieris since his first show. "He strikes me as a Euro-chic, an Old World kind of soul, gracious yet edgy at the same time."

Her Washington, D.C., area galleries are among the 400 or so across the country that represent the artist’s work, ranging from Zephyr Gallery in Pennsylvania and New Jersey to Santa Fe’s Off the Wall to Earthenworks in Washington state. Last year he was invited to premier his work at a show in Florence, Italy. The designs draw devoted fans and have graced the wrists of actors on the TV shows Sex and the City and Third Watch.

The complete article "Ready for Prime Time" can be found in the Spring 2003 issue of AmericanStyle magazine.